British police said they are treating a stabbing rampage in a park that killed three people as a “terrorist attack”.
Three people were killed and three others seriously wounded in the stabbing attack in the city’s Forbury Gardens Park on Saturday.
UK’s coordinator of counterterrorism policing, Dean Haydon, said on Sunday that counterterror detectives were taking over the investigation into the attack in the town of Reading.
Police had earlier said they were keeping an open mind about the motive.
They confirmed arresting a 25-year-old man.
A Black Lives Matter protest took place at the park earlier but police said there was no indication the two incidents were connected.
Witnesses reported seeing two air ambulances and several police cars rush to the park on Saturday evening.
One witness described a lone assailant walking through a park filled with people and stabbing them at random.
“The park was pretty full. A lot of people sat around drinking with friends,” Lawrence Wort told the Press Association.
“One lone person walked though, suddenly shouted some unintelligible words and went around a large group of around 10, trying to stab them.”
Wort said he saw three people being stabbed “in the neck and under the arms”.
The assailant then lunged at another group and “got one person in the back of the neck”, Wort said.
“Then when he realised everyone was starting to run, he ran out the park,” said the witness.
Officials said two people were being treated in the emergency department of Reading’s Berkshire Hospital.
An overwhelming majority of Britain’s serious crimes are committed with knives and other stabbing weapons because of the country’s strict gun ownership laws.
